Oliver Queen's A Parenting
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Opening himself up to love was never easy, but opening himself up to the strongest love he'd ever felt was the biggest challenge he'd ever face. It's no surprise he fails at it. Oliver/Felicity.


Ava Moira Queen comes home from the hospital in the arms of her mother.

There's a baby carrier over Oliver's arm, with Felicity's hospital bag and an array of other baby items - including a large helium balloon from his sister - slung across all available limbs, but their baby daughter enters their home for the first time in Felicity's arms, nothing more than a bundle of lilac blankets and a tiny face peeking out from within them. She's barely let the baby out of her arms since she was born yesterday morning, and Oliver's glad for that. She's worried so many times during the pregnancy about a thousand different things - almost as much as he has - and now that their baby girl was here she's just been so...perfect.

He's also glad she's taking charge because Oliver's terrified of his daughter.

If Felicity hadn't been so besotted with their new infant, then he thinks she'd have noticed it straight away.

But she doesn't notice. Not that he can tell. She doesn't notice that he's only held Ava once in the hospital unless he was passing the baby to her, and that he hasn't been alone with her at all except for the thirty-second bathroom breaks she was taking. She doesn't notice even as she takes the baby through to the nursery that he spent an entire weekend decorating and places her into the crib that Oliver has built with his bare hands.

He had wanted to place her there for the first time, he remembers. He wanted to carry her into the room he painted, right down to the jungle animal stencils on the wall, and say I built this for you. I built this bed for you. I picked the animals. I put together the wardrobe that holds your tiny clothes. Daddy isn't always a good man, but Daddy did this for you.

Felicity places Ava into the crib, and bless that tiny heart, she doesn't make a sound. She just looks at her with wide eyes and falls asleep again. She sleeps a lot. John's warned them of sleepless nights to come, but at the moment she's quiet and content until she's hungry, and even then her only sounds are tiny mewls as she seeks out her mother. Felicity turns to Oliver after she's settled, and he plays the good man he only knows how to be around her, kisses her tired forehead, and guides her of to their own bedroom so she can get some rest. She's barely slept since the baby was born.

She's awake again ten minutes later, lifting a now-crying Ava from her crib before Oliver can even work out how to lift her out while supporting her head.

Over the following days, Oliver comes to realise that while his presence as a father is needed sometimes, he's not really needed by his daughter. Because Felicity is everything she needs - Felicity is the perfect mother for his baby girl. Felicity paces the hallways with Ava on the nights that she won't stop screaming. Felicity changes her diapers. Felicity breast feeds their baby so he definitely isn't useful in that department. Felicity doesn't even complain that she's exhausted and needs his help. Felicity sang silly Disney songs, commercial tunes, even Billboard chart hits he's never heard, and tells her how beautiful and loved she is even though she doesn't understand her words yet. Felicity thrives at motherhood as she does with anything she can find on a computer. She is graceful as a mother even when she hasn't slept in twenty-three hours and has baby vomit stains on her shoulder. And Ava...she adores her for it.

And he wants that. He wants that moment of eye contact between him and his daughter, where she looks at him with innocence, with acceptance and adoration and such a pure, unfiltered love. He's watched Felicity have that moment as the two watch each other while she feeds the baby, but he just...couldn't.

Ava has her mother's eyes, her mother's chin, but his lips, his nose, and he knows that she'll grow to have his charming smile - a dangerous combination for something so small that already holds his entire heart in the palm of a hand only big enough to grasp his pinkie finger. She has dark blonde hair like his own - or maybe Felicity's natural hair colour - and a small birthmark on her ankle that makes her utterly unique to the both of them.

When they first discovered they were having a girl, Oliver had sworn to the sonogram photograph that he'd protect her, love her, and never let anyone hurt her.

And then his baby girl is placed in his arms for the first time, he sees innocent eyes looking up at him as her freshly born face screws up to wail, and he remembers all the lives he's taken. All the children whose parents never came home because he wasn't fast enough at getting the situation resolved. All the parents whose children suffered in the Undertaking he failed to stop, or the crimes that had taken them from their families when he'd been too late, and how can he promise to protect his daughter from these things? What makes him enough of a man to declare that is strong enough to raise his daughter in this hell-hole of a life they strived - and often failed - to save? What part of him deserves to hold that precious little girl and call her his own?

So he steps back. He watches from across the room, stirring a mug of tea for the woman he loves while she holds the gaze of the baby she feeds. He lays in bed staring at the ceiling while she sings to their daughter in the next room. He looks down at Ava in the rare moments he changes her diaper and he wonders - do you even know me? I'm your father. Did you know that? - and as time goes on, he becomes nothing more than a support to Felicity, not to their daughter.

Ava is twelve weeks old when he first leaves the city. He's taken a few missions that Felicity had insisted he needed to keep him sane, but this is the first time he's left Starling City, left them alone, and it makes him uneasy. The plane is halfway to Central City when he realises that he'd kissed Felicity goodbye and walked right past his daughter without a second glance. And by the time the plane lands and Barry is grinning at him, congratulating him on being a father, he feels such a strong self-loathing that he finds an excuse to get some time to himself when things quiet down afterwards.

Because there's a tugging at his heart that isn't guilt. There's something pulling him away from the riverside view of Central City, and it's there at the side of the water where he feels incomplete as a man for the first time since she'd slipped her hand into his and never let it go. Because he may not be her primary caregiver, but his daughter is not within sight or sound. He sleeps in a hotel room and he cannot hear Felicity's calming babble as she soothes through Ava's distaste of mornings. He makes himself coffee and looks across the room to see that they aren't curled into an armchair together exchanging soft sounds and intense glances. He misses his wife. This time when his hand slides across cold, empty sheets, he knows she isn't in the next room seeing to the baby. The only technology at the side of his bed is his cellphone - there's no tablet PC, no baby monitor, no alarm clock, no forgotten stuffed animal and muslin square.

He wants his daughter.

He pulls out his phone, dialling Felicity's number despite the late hour. It was the middle of the night, thirty minutes after Ava's feed, he guessed, so she may still be awake. Her voice is tired when she answers the phone. "Hey, gorgeous," he speaks softly. "Baby girl keeping you up?"

"Just got her back to sleep," she replies quietly, showing that the baby is still in her arms despite being asleep. "Everything okay out there? It's late, is something wrong?"

She's fearing injury, casualty, worse... why else would he call in the middle of the night? "Miss you," he tells her honestly. "Both of you."

The silence that follows makes him realise that she's always noticed his distance from their daughter. She's been waiting patiently for him to figure this out on his own, because she's pushed him on things before he's ready in the past and it hasn't worked out well. This isn't something they can afford to lose, so she's attempting patience so they'll be okay in the long run.

"Oliver," she whispers, not even trying to finish that sentence.

"I've got some more things to do before we leave," he said, glancing at his watch. "I should get home just as you're waking up in the morning."

"Okay," she tells him, not arguing with his decision.

"When I'm home, we're locking the door for the day," he continues, words he should have spoken months ago spilling from his mouth in a way far more suited to her. "We're locking the door, shutting down all computers, all phones, no TV...and I want to spent the whole day with my daughter in my arms."

"Oliver…"

"I'm sorry, Felicity," he whispers, running his hand up through his hair. "I know that's not enough to say, but I am. I'm sorry. I was so scared about being her father that I just...decided not to be."

"Come home safe," she tells him quietly. "Come back to us, and we'll fix it, okay?"

He's not sure how he makes it through the rest of the trip, but he isn't going to let anything break his promise. The moment he closes the door behind him, he switches off his cellphone - after texting John to tell him why, to avoid any panic - and leaves it in his bag in the entrance hall, tossing his jacket along with it. He walks through the quiet halls, noticing there's no gentle sounds to lead him to where his family is. The door to Ava's nursery is open, though, and he steps inside, taking a moment to admire her over the bars of the crib.

She is beautiful, isn't she?

She's wide awake but quiet - did you know I was coming home? Were you waiting for me? Is that a smile for me? - and he takes her in his arms as easily as if he'd known all along. She can support her own head now, so he's not paranoid about hurting her or dropping her. There's still no stirring from their bedroom, so he changes her diaper, dresses her in a new onesie, and goes to the rocking chair in the corner, laying her down in his arms as she stares at up at him.

That she know his face is heart-warming.

"This is new, isn't it?" he whispers to her, careful to keep the room quite. God knows Felicity could do with a lie-in.

Ava coos at him quietly.

"I know, I've been a bad father so far, haven't I?" he tells her, stroking a finger down her tiny cheek. "I'm going to try and do better from now on though, if you'll forgive me?"

She reaches up with her tiny hands, still so small and delicate, and grabs his hand, pulling it down to her level so she can play with his fingers.

"I hope that's a yes," he mumbles, but her attention is firmly on his hands now. "Look, your mom? She's always gonna be the best mom in the world, okay? She's perfect for the both of us. She'll know what you need and when you need it. Me? I'm going to need a few more cues than that. My dad wasn't exactly father of the year either, so I'm not working on a good example. Being a dad is scary, y'know. I'm so scared I'll screw up and someone will be able to hurt you."

Ava stops her attempt to chew on his fingers, burying a drool-covered hand into his shirt instead, holding herself to him as her face looks up at his. This is what Felicity gets to experience every single day, this eye contact, this mutual love, and there's nothing in this world that could make him look away from her right now.

"I know I've not been very good at showing it, but you're my baby girl, and I have so much love for you that I don't know what to do with it. Usually I have your mom to kick my ass when I get bad at that, but she's been kinda busy keeping you happy lately," he smiles. "I might not be able to promise that no one will ever hurt you, but I can promise that as long as I'm your father, I won't let anyone get away with it. If someone hurts you, I'll hunt them to the ends of the Earth. because that's what I am good at. But failing my girls isn't an option, so I'm going to get good at being a dad as well. I'm going to learn to be everything you need and deserve, I just…" he sighed, lifting her so that his arm was cupped under her backside, their faces closer now that she was propping herself up against his chest. "I'm just a bit of a disaster right now."

Ava coos again, leaning to kiss a sloppy smack of her lips to the end of Oliver's nose. It's far from a proper kiss, but she's obviously leaning cues from her mother already in showing affection. When he smiles, he sees a flash of pink behind her and there's Felicity leaning in the doorway, a baby monitor hanging from her hand that tells him she heard the entire exchange. He stands from the chair, kisses the woman who bought life to his daughter, and guides them both into the master bedroom.

He has a promise to keep.


End file.
